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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Book Review: The Scorched Earth by Drew Karpyshyn

Though I wasn't a huge fan of the first book in Karpyshyn's Chaos Born
series (Children of Fire), I was just intrigued enough to request an
advanced reader's copy of The Scorched Earth - and thankfully, I found this second installment much more interesting. I
wouldn't say that it's action-packed, but THANKFULLY it's missing the
drawn-out set up that really dragged Children of Fire down.

The
main issue with these novels is that most of the characters are vapid and boring,
and - even taking into consideration the rules of the magic system that Karpyshyn created - the whole plight with the "chaos spawn" is
completely unbelievable. If you want to read a novel that plays out like
a D&D encounter, all of this may be fine for you, but it's simply
not to my taste.

I will give the author credit for decent
world-building, though. Not just the physical surroundings, but the
different races that populate them, are original and therefore compelling. They
are what bumped my rating from 2 stars to 2.5/5 stars, and what may bring me back to read the final
book in the trilogy.

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By day I'm a Controller for a small company; by night I write - not just fiction, but also reviews and editorials for pop culture website The Geekiary. A geek at heart, I've spoken about geek culture at several industry conventions(including San Diego Comic-Con and Dragon Con) Ohio State University, and TedX Sarasota. I also co-founded and co-organize Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones/Song of Ice & Fire convention in the U.S. I reside in lovely Greenville, SC with a plethora of dogs and cats.